


The Universe Doesn't Turn Any Kinder (Love's Never Fair)

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-11
Updated: 2009-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:50:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The problem of love is this – it's never fair. Meet a man that will one day join hearts with you, and it's at the end of the world. Fall in love with a woman that you can share books with, and she's dying of cancer. Finally sleep together and start a relationship, and days after, the world goes to hell and mutiny.</i> [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Universe Doesn't Turn Any Kinder (Love's Never Fair)

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers up to "Blood on the Scales". Many thanks to lyricalviolet for beta.

The Universe Doesn't Turn Any Kinder (Love's Never Fair)  
by **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

The problem of love is this – it's never fair. Meet a man that will one day join hearts with you, and it's at the end of the world. Fall in love with a woman that you can share books with, and she's dying of cancer. Finally sleep together and start a relationship, and days after, the world goes to hell and mutiny.

Love's never fair. Never.

II

She would tear a battlestar apart to find him, but when Laura Roslin sees William Adama again, she can't even manage a few steps to walk up to him.

He is just waiting as she turns around, his fingers entwined and the light in his hair making it almost seem like a crown. Bill. Bill. Her heart seems to beat with it, _is_ it.

For a brief moment while she watches him walk up to her, she wishes she didn't love him; that it would be easier if he was just the Admiral and any threat against him wasn't also a threat to her heart.

Then she is touching his face (seeing her own emotions mirrored in his) and his eyes are like glass when meeting hers; and it's Bill. It's Bill, and maybe it would be easier, but it would also be emptier.

She's already been there, and now she's here, Laura Roslin with Bill Adama.

He doesn't say anything and she can't, falling a little against his shoulder as all her bones seem to ache at once. She breathes in the smell of him for just a second, clutching a little at his shoulder, still tallying reassurances he's actually there.

She's running out of things to lose. He is not an option.

She wishes she could kiss away his pain, let him caress away hers; it doesn't seem fair that after all they've suffered, there's still more.

He keeps an arm around her as they start walking together, she around him, and she isn't quite sure who is steadying who. She knows she wishes she had more strength to lend him, her own feeling so insufficient. His own men tried to kill him. She knows his heart. It will not carry that lightly.

"Did they...?" she murmurs, not quite sure what she's asking. Hurt him, torture him, treat him badly, come close to killing him?

"I'm fine," he says, a rather blatant lie since none of them are. But he looks uninjured in the main, no bruises or cuts she can see. He's alive, and everything else will heal.

She more hears than feels the hatch be opened in front, and then behind them. His quarters, she notes. Home. They're home. Everything that has happened has taken less than a day, and she'd laugh at the absurdity of it if she wasn't so busy feeling everything else.

"Laura," he says, cupping a cheek and then can't seem to think of any more to say. It is enough for her in any case, and she leans into Bill's touch a little blindly, fingers tracing the lines of his chin and jaw. He slips a hand around her waist to steady her against him, and for a long time they just stand like that.

She's dying; she didn't think of the possibilty of his death first. For so long, he's carried the knowledge of her cancer, she doesn't think she understood the pain of it until now. Now they're even.

"Laura," he says again, pressing a kiss against her temple. "You should get some rest. I have a few more things to take care of and I'll join you."

"If you don't, I'll come for you," she mutters, and ten hours ago he would have laughed at that. Now he merely smiles faintly.

"Yes, you will," he agrees, and his kiss tastes a little of blood.

II

Laura is resting when Bill returns; half-so, at least, stretched out on his couch, and he knows she will not be be going to bed before he does. He can almost hear her arguments in his head, how he is the one who've had the real draining day and she has just hung out on a basestar, how he will make a poor Admiral sleepless and nothing will change by staying up all night drinking, how sleep is not a military decision and on and on till his exhaustion and capitulation.

She won't say anything about nightmares at all, but he knows she will try to chase them away by simply being there. So she won't go to bed before he does, and is looking strangely comfortable on his couch right now, head propped up on an arm, legs curled slightly.

She is beautiful, but then she always is, being Laura.

He sits down carefully next to her, but it is still enough to stir her from what must be uneasy rest, and she lifts her head to look at him.

Laura, he thinks, and tries not to think of anything else.

He wants to forget the universe in her skin, wants to erase her troubles with his touch; it doesn't seem fair that there is never a break. Not even for them.

"They're dead," he tells her after a moment, trying to keep his voice neutral.

"Zarek and Gaeta?"

"Yes."

She nods slowly, sitting up and looking at him so intently he wonders what she sees.

"Bill," she says, lifting a hand to his cheek. "You called Gaeta one of 'those kids' to me once. You don't have to..."

"I have to," he breaks in, and again, she nods slowly. She knows. She knows, and it hurts. It would be easier if she didn't see right through him, if she didn't know him, and he didn't see himself in her eyes. He could hide then.

It would be easier. It would also be far more lonely.

He's already been there, and now he's here, William Adama with Laura Roslin.

He tilts his head as she kisses him, a soft, unrelenting touch of lips to lips that might be comfort and might be seeking reassurance. Her fingers find his Admiral's pips that he's put back on, the ones she originally gave him now so long ago. For a second he thinks she means to pull them off, but she merely touches them for a moment before lowering her hands again.

He takes her hands instead, entwining her fingers in his, not breaking the kiss. He's not sure how to tell her what her refusal to give up on him meant to him, how the sound of her voice was enough to hold him up when all else (and Saul) seemed lost, how he cannot think to lose her, how he...

"Bill," she whispers, her eyes as clear as glass as she looks at him. "I love you."

Oh. There is that way, of course.

"Laura," he whispers back, and her kiss tastes of tears. "I love you."

It won't solve anything, won't fuel the Fleet, won't mend broken trust and won't keep Gaeta's face out of his nightmares tonight.

It just is.

II

Love's never fair. Love a dying woman, love a tired man. Love after the end of the world, love while running out of time. Love, and everything can still fall apart around you. Love, and the universe doesn't turn any kinder. It's not fair.

Humans have never been good at fair.

They're just _phenomenal_ at love; for all the universe is never kinder for it, for all the odds stacked against it, for all the pains that comes with it, for all life doesn't really reward it.

They just never stop loving.

Talk about unfair.

II

FIN


End file.
